Anniversaries and due credit

03.18.09

With the 8th anniversary of the closure of Fresh Kills Landfill coming up, the Staten Island Advance’s blog, The Staten Island Notebook, published this story reviewing the steps preceding the landfill’s closure.  The story singles out one man, former Fresh Kills crane operator John Leverock, as a possible progenitor of the idea to close Fresh Kills and to containerize and export the city’s waste, as the current Solid Waste Management Plan prescribes.  As with most good ideas, it’s not clear whether Leverock’s impassioned and detailed 1987 letter to higher-ups at the Department of Sanitation was the actual inspiration for the plan, or whether the idea germinated independently.

Who knows where ideas come from or how they travel? People seem to possess a natural resistance to new ideas, probably because they oftentimes require change. A fellow named Howard Aiken once observed: “Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.”

Tags: Department of Sanitation, Fresh Kills Landfill, Freshkills Park, history, New York City, Staten Island